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> There is no question if I want to do it, it is set at that time and I have to do it, period. Gosh it must be nice to have at least an ordinary amount of exec

• cheald 9mo ago
  It still requires willpower, but to use a metaphor, it's much easier to travel down a well-trod path than it is to cut a new path through the jungle. Repetition and consistency establishes the path, so the willpower required to travel down it the next day is reduced over time. Establishing a pre-set time and committing to that time ahead of time removes the "will I or won't I" decision at "go time", when you're most likely to falter.
  • kayodelycaon 9mo ago
    This method requires a significant amount of executive function. My body doesn't feel the passage of time consistently. So my mind is never prepared to switch activities when it needs to. And there are times my brain stops working on a particular task and nothing can get it started again. It's like a leg going out, you just can't stand on it. This isn't occasionally where habit could be picked back up. This has been a problem every day of my life. In my experience, this has been the death of every bit advice I've gotten from a neurotypical person. A lot of them keep circling back to discipline or trying harder as a solution to a problem they can't make sense of. Lack of understanding isn't their fault, this is so far outside their frame of reference they can't make sense of it in a single conversation. Fortunately understanding isn't required, only the acceptance that other people have limits they don't have themselves.
    • technothrasher 9mo ago
      I would imagine you'd get this advice from other non-neurotypical people too. My son is neurodivergant, and strict routine like what is being described is about the only thing that keeps him able to handle most daily life tasks regularly. But plenty of other advice he constantly gets frustrates him similarly to the frustration you seem to be describing. We call it "you've just never had it cooked right" advice. So I feel your exasperation.
      • kayodelycaon 9mo ago
        I call it the “loadbearing just”. :) “if you’ve just did this” Most neurodivergent people I’ve met accept my limitations and don’t expect what works for them to work for me. It might take a little explanation but they didn’t seem to get upset about it. The few that have expected me to be like them, expected other people to be like them as well. So it wasn’t specific to me.
    • machomaster 9mo ago
      Do you ever feel unmotivated to go to the toilet despite needing to? Has this lack of motivation ever stopped you from getting from your chair? What modern people usually lack is not time, but lack of energy. Usually this is thought as the energy to do stuff (like coding a side hussle in the evening). But often it manifests in a lack of energy: 1. to make a decision (to do something) 2. to slow down, to stop the current activity and to think with the rational mind. So you need to recognize these things and do certain decisions beforehand to solve the problem. Stuff like: 1. Go to the gym in the morning, when you still have the decision energy. 2. Create a habit, linking a new habit with the old ones, in order to decrease the energy expenditure 3. Increase the stakes, like getting a gym buddy 4. Decide stuff beforehand. Pack the bag, set up the alarm clock (to go to gym, to go to sleep) 5. When you are tired, actually rest. Don't turn the tv on, don't scroll social media, stop touching yourself via phone. If you are tired, eat, go to gym or a walk, go to sleep or simply sit in your chair or lay on the sofa looking at the walls. I guarantee, watching at the wall for 30 minutes straight will give you great motivation to do something else more productive. Don't let the monkey in you convince you to do the unproductive things I mentioned. Stay strong and make a rational decision what to do instead of looking at the wall. Do the right thing, not the thing that may feel nice in the midst of it. 6. Take care of the nutrition/sleep in order to increase the energy reserves I hope that helps.
      • kayodelycaon 9mo ago
        I really don’t like being snarky here but this is an absolutely perfect example of what I was talking about in my last paragraph. I didn’t mention energy because energy has no relevance. I’ve literally broken down crying because I really wanted to work but my brain refused to move. I was having such a great day and was really motivated. I spend hours and absolutely exhausted every bit of energy I had trying every advice that I’ve spent my entire life hearing. I could not get a single word out of my brain. Nothing worked. I spent my entire childhood trying harder and got nowhere. I probably shouldn’t say this, but I get quite pissed off when people tell me to try hard harder.
        • a_t48 9mo ago
          You aren't the only one. For me it was diagnosed as ADHD.
    • dugidugout 9mo ago
      I struggle daily to urge myself to eat after years of habitual starvation. The process of storing and making food through-out the week is extremely difficult for me to say the least... I also don't have room in my finances to out-source this completely. To combat this, I have been successfully meal prepping on the weekends; however, I still often struggle with the basic task of eating the food, prepped and served. It is a common experience for me to get part-way into eating a dish, move on to another task, and neglect the food until it's spoiled only to realize so when I pack up for the day. Sometimes I will even notice the food, deep into a task, but the thought to address it is hardly formed. In this regard neurotypical advice _did_ actually help me I suppose. However, when applied to a habit not immediately linked to your existence, it is quite alienating to receive.
      • kayodelycaon 9mo ago
        I should make an exception for suggestions on how to change my environment to better suit me. Those don’t bother me because they don’t fundamentally misunderstand the problem.
    • QuiEgo 9mo ago
      Just a shout out here for medication. ADHD meds are rated effective in the 70-90% range, which is just incredibly good compared to medication effectiveness for just about anything else. I have ADHD, and hate the feeling of being a victim. "I have this, so I can't do that. It's just the way it is." No! Not for this. Not when there are so many treatment options. I accept that things may be harder for me than a typical person, that I may have to put in more work than other people to get the same results, that this is something that's very real that I have to deal with and manage at all times. That there will be times when I will fail and my stupid monkey brain will win the moment. But I won't let it define me, I won't let it dictate who I am and what I can and cannot do. EDIT: Also, I mean to agree with you here: there's a point where no amount of discipline will work, and the advice to "just try harder" sounds like an alien telling you to just grow wings and fly. If you find yourself at that point, medicine can and will help. It also helps you be able to get in a routine of actually doing exercise, which in turn helps even more, and it becomes a sweet positive feedback loop.
  • skywhopper 9mo ago
    It really doesn’t remove that for everyone. Glad if it works for you.
• bluerooibos 9mo ago
  All you need to do is go to sleep before 12 every single night and wake up at 7am without fail, hit the gym and crank out a few sets of squats, hit the pool and the sauna, read a chapter of that book, and then cook yourself an amazing breakfast, all before 9am. If you're a real go-getter, though, you'd wake up at 6am and do some vibe coding for an hour on that side hustle. Super simple.
  • roguechimpanzee 9mo ago
    I know you’re being smart but these things are all possible if you want to make them happen
    • andy99 9mo ago
      People would rather blame external factors and not take responsibility. It’s actually insulting to people who work hard that some people assume they have it easy somehow, like the “must be nice” comment upstream. Not everyone takes the view that you can’t control what happens to you, it’s pretty easy to see who does.
      • davorak 9mo ago
        > People would rather blame external factors and not take responsibility. In my opinion the first step to taking responsibility is acknowledging reality. That reality can includes brains and bodies being different, sometimes extremely so. If someones brain or body is different but they deny it, stick their head in the sand, ignore it, then they are at a disadvantage when they try to take responsibility for something and may fail due to failing to acknowledging reality.
      • roguechimpanzee 9mo ago
        You can actually just choose to lock in. And you don't need a perfect streak. Waking up early, working out and eating a nutritious breakfast is a perfect morning for probably 90% of people but our society is so broken that being healthy is associated with being either a grifter or a fascist.
• phil21 9mo ago
  I have utterly horrible executive function. Diagnosed and everything. Sitting here on HN right now avoiding boring spreadsheet work to finish my day out. It’s not easy for anyone to develop these style of habits and routines. It’s just hard mode and takes much more effort for folks with executive dysfunction. The first rule is choose one thing and stick to it. With realistic goals. Mine was: I am going to walk at least 6,000 steps a day. No matter what. Zero excuses. Since schedules are insanely difficult for me I set none. If I remembered I still needed to walk and I could do it in the moment I simply prioritized it. It’s surprisingly easy to fit in 10 minutes of walk in throughout your day, even when working a desk job. It could simply mean pacing while on conference calls. Another rule was “if I fail to achieve it one day, I must achieve it the next” to avoid the “all or nothing” mental trap. This was to the level of getting into bed, checking step counter, and if I was under target literally getting out of bed, putting clothes back on, and walking until I hit it. I had all sorts of technical widgets to enforce this and help remind me. It totally sucked for the first couple months. Then it started to just become a thing. Then I ramped it up to 12k/day until I hit a weight goal. It’s the best thing I ever did for my mental health since it started a snowball in other areas of my life. I was able to swap out a few days of steps for an hour workout (beginning with a personal trainer to force me to show up 2 days a week minimum). I was and still am constantly 10 minutes late to my session but no matter what I show up to them. The weeks I miss them due to schedule conflicts or travel I feel much worse mentally. And it’s easy to give into the anxiety and panic over not having enough time in the day to fit it in after procrastinating on other items. You also start to realize that those other items are probably not as important as you thought. I find routine and habits over schedule and calendaring are hyper-important for my dysfunction and have leaned into that. It’s more of a “this thing before that thing” sort of deal vs “at 3pm I do the thing” since the latter would go off the rails immediately. It’s possible. Just the hardest thing I’ve maybe ever accomplished in life so far. Gonna be different for everyone and you probably need that one moment of clarity to get the initial motivation. The motivation will go away, but the habits and discipline will probably stick around. Been using this same method to build habits and routine into other areas of my life now as well.
  • Ostrogoth 9mo ago
    > I find routine and habits over schedule and calendaring I find the same. To keep myself honest, I built a simple habit tracking sheet (grid paper; 1 page/month; x axis list items; y axis list days). Keep it simple to reduce friction, no more than a handful of items, and try to stack habits and routines. Focus on anchor points of the day like sleep/work/exercise/nutrition/meal prep/tidy house. I’ll also track non-action items like coffee/alcohol/anxiety/video games/book reading, etc. Include the process as part of end of day wind down and reflection.
• cgriswald 9mo ago
  Willpower is what you use when you’re allowed choice and know you should make the good choice but actually feel like choosing the bad choice. The trick to good discipline is to never allow it to be a choice. There are no excuses. There is no negotiation. It just is the same way the sun rises or the tax man comes. Good discipline is a skill you develop and it is far easier than trying to live via something as temperamental as willpower.
  • astrange 9mo ago
    You need some level of willpower to get your legs to take you to another place. Certainly if it involves getting in a car and parking. If you don't have that, the skill needed to develop it is the skill to get someone to prescribe you amphetamines.
  • smeej 9mo ago
    You say "when you're allowed choice" like there are some times when you aren't allowed choice, and I think this is where you lose me. Everything is a choice. Always. It's not a matter of "allowed/not allowed." It's just a reality of existence for me. I'm not sure if I can explain this, but I can try. You seem to have a kind of "decision persistence" that I don't have, where having decided it once makes it still true in the actual moment of taking the action. It doesn't matter how many times I choose things in advance, in the hypothetical, for the future--and the future is always in the hypothetical. I still have to choose every moment, day in and day out, what I'm doing. Even now, it's not quite a foregone conclusion that I'm going to finish typing this and click the "reply" button. Probably will, but I won't know that for SURE until I've done it. I might decide it isn't worth it after all. My brain simply does not consider past decisions binding on present activity. I might still decide to do the same thing I thought I would do at this time when I thought about this earlier, but I have to decide it again, because it hasn't happened yet. Every moment is a "deciding again," which means every moment needs willpower. Putting on one shoe doesn't guarantee the other shoe comes next. After a shit, pulling up my underpants doesn't guarantee the pants come next. Maybe I step out of the pants and am halfway through lunch before I realize I never pulled my pants up after the toilet and have been walking around my house without pants for 45 minutes. "It just is" is not an experience I have. They're not excuses. The next thing just goes, right out of my head. I don't talk myself out of doing what I previously decided to do next or into something else. But there is no mechanism that makes something happen just because I decided it should earlier. There always has to be another choice, in each moment, about what to do, and whether to keep doing it. Every one of these choices requires willpower, and there's only so much in the jar. But it's not like the jar fills up once, overnight, and I just draw from the jar until it's empty and then it's gone for the day. The jar arbitrarily loses and gains willpower ad hoc throughout the day. So I can always reach into the jar, and sometimes there's some willpower in there and I can do the thing that Planning Smeej thought would be a good idea yesterday, but sometimes there's not, and nobody knows what's going to happen until maybe there is again later. I don't know if I've made that make any sense. I just know that you're describing a reality fundamentally different than the one I experience.
• worldsayshi 9mo ago
  I'm not claiming this works for everyone but what sometimes work for me to form a routine is to do the thing but without committing effort to it. I.e. go to the gym but you only promise yourself to go there, not actually spend effort there. Any actual exercise you then do is a bonus, not a "payment on your promise". I think it can be generalized as: Find the thing to do that doesn't require much effort but puts you in the context of doing the effortful thing. Do that thing. See if you "want" to do the effortful thing. Otherwise go home. Cleaning? Put the vacuum in your hands and see if something happens. At least I think that's how it works for me. The points when it's hardest to make it work is when there's lots of distractions. Like when you try to get into a routine of doing work at a computer.
• singpolyma3 9mo ago
  Your daily reminder that neurotypical people do not exist.
• byproxy 9mo ago
  What makes this “neurotypical?” I don’t necessarily consider myself as such, but I’ve made it a point to have some routine in my life. In fact, I think being highly regimented and sticking to a routine can be very neuroatypical. I would never go so far as to say I’m autistic, but there are markers on that spectrum, like becoming upset when a routine is disrupted. I certainly am perturbed when I’ve set some routine for myself and something interrupts it.
• fatata123 9mo ago
  [dead]
• safety1st 9mo ago
  The parent comment's point is that you can reduce the amount of executive function required to do the correct thing. Doing something at the same time every day will indeed make it more automatic, requiring less willpower to do it again tomorrow. This effect applies whether you're neurotypical or not and is grounded in behavioral research. There are better examples in my opinion than just doing something at 18:00 every day. There's a technique called habit stacking where you identify all the habits you already have at a given time (like when you first wake up), and then you add one more at the end. It's easier to introduce a new habit this way, and it becomes ingrained more quickly, resulting in less need to use executive function. There are still more techniques. An example from my personal life: in my whole adult life, I've never gone to the gym... unless I sign up for a gym that's right across the street from my workplace. Then it happens like clockwork. If all I need to do is walk across the street, I end up in the gym, and inevitably, I work out. If I need to drive 20 minutes though, well my willpower just ain't that great, so it basically never happens. The best book I've read on this topic is Atomic Habits by James Clear. He goes deep down the rabbit hole of these techniques you can employ and touches on the research it's all based on. The brain's not a computer so I mean it's not all just going to come together automatically, but in my experience this stuff does work.